Me & The War

One of the commenters to an idiotic Winds of Change post about me raises a good question about the disaster of Iraq:

If it was all so foreseeable, why didn't Yglesias foresee it? The truth is, he was pro-war when that was fashionable, and now he's antiwar when that is fashionable.

I plead not guilty to the charge of fashionability since you'll see I turned against the war before it was fashionable to do so. I could give a long answer detailing my naiveté about the war, but the truth of the matter is that in an irresponsible-but-probably-typical manner I just took my cues from the fact that almost all of the leading Democrats seemed to be backing Bush on this and so I did, too. It was only after the invasion that I bothered to read Charles Tripp's A History of Iraq and begin to get any information about Iraq that wasn't specifically designed as a polemic about the war.

Well, my heart sunk like a stone. Between reading that book and once I bothered to notice that the nuclear weapons intelligence was all wrong (I'm always baffled by how few hawks changed their mind after this, seeing as it was the centerpiece of the argument for war and all), it looked pretty clear that I'd gotten this wrong. In retrospect, I think it was all foreseeable enough, but like a lot of people I said a lot about this issue without knowing anything about it and it's hard to make forecasts from a perspective of total ignorance.

But that goes back to the point I was making about Weber (Justin Logan busts out a similar point against Michael Gerson) and Roger Cohen -- you need to take responsibility for these things. Glancing around and noticing that Saddam Hussein is bad and spreading liberty is good are easy. But there's nothing moral about carelessly supporting careless endeavors that, though draped in good intentions and lofty statements of purpose, in fact turn out to be bloody disasters.

Comments

I'm guessing that if you were young and ambitious in america at the time of the iraq war, subconsciously you probably thought that if the war was successful you'd be completely marginalised from mainstrem debate.

Most democrats who supported the war were looking forward to future elections, while the most prominent dissenters had retired from politics.

The fact that Obama opposed the war at the time is probably the biggest reason why I think higher of him than the other democratic candidates.

Posted by shariq | October 11, 2007 8:39 AM

I just took my cues from the fact that almost all of the leading Democrats seemed to be backing Bush on this and so I did, too.

This isn't a phenomenon limited to foreign policy, leading Democrats as reasonableness measures, or you.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | October 11, 2007 9:11 AM

"like a lot of people I said a lot about this issue without knowing anything about it "

And there we have (the large majority of) the blogosphere summed up in a sentence! And not just on Iraq. This isn't to say that blogs like the famous Matt's are not useful- this one, for example, provides a useful summary of the news and often points me at stories that interest me but that I don't have time to find myself. But for more than that most blogs, at least ones not by specialists on specialist topics, are largely worthless. (There was also pleanty of information that should have lead a reasonable person to think the nuclear weapons claims were BS well before the war, too.)

Posted by Matt (not the famous one) | October 11, 2007 9:15 AM

I do think it wasn't that difficult to piece together what would happen-- I was able to do it, and reflecting back, the only thing I really missed was how utterly incompetent that the administration would be on military matters.

The interesting thing is that I did my reasoning with little knowledge of the political debates going on at the time (was somewhat intentionally not seeking political news as it was all so depressing). The reasoning I used was somewhat of an a priori thought process, which though reasonable from an intellectual standpoint is probably completely ineffective from a normal persuasive standpoint. Just because antiwar position was quite logical doesn't mean that it will sell.

Posted by Dean Chung | October 11, 2007 9:19 AM

I'm willing to "forgive" MY, if only because is criticism of the war since has been so trenchant. I'm not willing to forgive the libertarians (like Brink Lindsey) who supported this war or Glenn Reynolds who continues to support this war. It's beyond me how people who claim government can't even deliver the trash efficiently can buy the bullshit that this administration fed about creating a democratic Iraq in a year and a half.

Posted by Joe Strummer | October 11, 2007 9:27 AM

Matt I can definitely symphatize. Had I been in your situation I think I would have done the same. I only reluctantly opposed the war, and it wasn't because of a lot of specific knowledge of Iraq (though I had had some classes on the Middle East), but rather it was because I was living in Berlin. This meant I was reading the American hype and the German criticism and in the end I thought the Germans were right. The Europeans, at least some of their intellectuals and commentators, were saying some pretty smart stuff about what happens afterwards and questioning why close down diplomacy so soon? I couldnt' answer that satisfactorily and in the end I decided in my own mind that the war was a mistake. I had a brief flash of self-doubt after the Army rolled through Iraq in such a short time--even in Bagdad, but events soon proved my scepticism correct. Unfortunately so, I would have preferred to have been wrong.

Posted by D | October 11, 2007 9:44 AM

Marc Danziger is obsessing on Matt in a pathetic attempt to avoid writing about the war. A subject he used to spend a lot of time on but now, not so much.

Posted by Davebo | October 11, 2007 9:44 AM

Flatulence of Entropy: The reality is that what Weber would have said is that the decision to go to war - or not - is one fraught with moral cost for those who would consider it seriously, and that keeping a morally pure heart and also doing good politics are not typically something that can be done.

So basically you're saying Bush is impure in his heart?

you need to take responsibility for these things.

And you have; and further, you're vastly younger than most of the clueless prats who cannot admit to error and/or helped kick this thing off. (Although, in fairness, getting it really wrong at sixty is a career-ender. Of course, I'm implying that most of these people have no real concerns outside themselves.)

max
['It's interesting how the cause of war has effectively been written off as an 'Act of God'.']

Posted by max | October 11, 2007 9:47 AM

I hasten to point out that this is one of the disadvantages of going to war with an entity who does not directly threaten our own national security. When, say, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, the threat posed by Japan was sufficiently clear that people were forced to consider the merits of war with Japan qua the extent to which it is important to incapacitate and defeat them militarily. 9/11, by contrast, didn't have anything to do with a threat posed by Iraq, other than in a vague they're-all-over-there-in-that-same-part-of-the-world kind of way, and so when Bush proposed war with Iraq as a response to 9/11, the link to our national security was sufficiently abstract that it practically invited people to evaluate the war on grounds other than "what will be the ultimate impact for national security?" Matt, instead, chose the not-entirely-insensible metric of "do people with whom I generally agree seem to be backing this?" I think this is also why it was so easy for the pundit class (Hitchens, Friedman, etc.) to support the war for reasons that were at first totally unrelated to our actual, stated reason for going to war.

Unless a war is clearly a response to a national security threat, nothing forces people to evaluate whether or not that war will, in fact, enhance our national security by neutralizing that threat. What happened instead in Iraq was, essentially, that we decided we were going to go to war, and people were more or less invited to make up their own reasons why. Kind of the foreign policy version of "just go shopping."

Posted by Daniel Munz | October 11, 2007 9:55 AM

Here you go with the "good intentions" again. Again, I don't see it. I see an irresponsible caving to bloodlust and the administration's fearmongering ... not to mention groupthink. I think Cohen's rather disingenuous showing last week only confirms this.

Posted by Steve V | October 11, 2007 9:56 AM

Matt, instead, chose the not-entirely-insensible metric

"Insensible," of course, doesn't make any sense there. Is "un-sensible" a word? (I simply refuse to accept that "not sensible" is the only solution here.)

Posted by Daniel Munz | October 11, 2007 10:00 AM

Seems to me the Winds of Change attacks on MY are little too personal. You attack the ball not the man.

However ... NATO ally Turkey's reaction to the House non-binding vote on the Armenian genocide reminds me of the anti-war left's assessment of Saddam.

The Turks argue that yes the Ottoman's killing of the Armenians was bad, but it wasn't that bad. Just as some argue, yes Saddam was bad, but he wasn't that bad.

I believe for many, it's just matter of thinking that whatever Bush and the Republicans want, it must be bad, so they'll oppose it, practical realities and facts notwithstanding.

People seem to forget, the war itself was quick and cheap. Years of sanctions plus Saddam had left Iraq a mess, which is why things turned so ugly and why people started reconsidering their views on the war. The easiest thing would have been to installed another Sunni dictator to "restore order." No dobut that's what the Saudis and other Sunni nations wanted.

Posted by Peter K. | October 11, 2007 10:03 AM

Daniel I agree with a lot of what you said, but Hitchens was definitely in it for his own reasons. He wanted to knock everything down so something new could pop up—revolutionary-style--, which should have scared more people.

Unfortunately, I think another problem is that so many people, well, Americans that is, subconsciously think that democracy is the natural state of things--if you remove the impediments (dictators, the secret police, etc.) democracy will just spring up. As though the only thing from stopping democracy are unnatural and alien institutions or people. But this is nonsense of course. Democracy is not natural and is dependent on institutions and what Tocqueville called "habits of the heart." Our Foreign Policy elite should have looked at the 1911 revolution in China or the history of Africa as counterexamples instead focusing only on the examples of post-WWII Japan and Germany. All people may desire liberty, but they define it differently, and even if they didn't, political, economic, and social institutions (or lack thereof) might prevent it in the short to medium term. Most of you probably know all of this, of course; I just wish more of our exalted Foreign Policy elite did.

Posted by D | October 11, 2007 10:08 AM

Matt, instead, chose the not-entirely-insensible metric of "do people with whom I generally agree seem to be backing this?"

Except that I suspect he made a mistake about whom the people with whom he generally agrees are. There were a fair number of well-regarded people--including, I think, a lot of people who are IR scholars--who were against the invasion on grounds that weren't disconsonant with the way that Yglesias seems to think.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | October 11, 2007 10:08 AM

years of sanctions plus Saddam had left Iraq a mess

This was precisely the reason many people argued that there was no immediate need to go to war. Why we needed to invade Iraq in the spring of 2003 is something no one has been able to answer.

Posted by Tyro | October 11, 2007 10:10 AM

Enough with the self-flagellation. Had you even graduated college when this debate was going on?

I'd hate to be held to every dumbass opinion I had in my early twenties.

Posted by Bloom | October 11, 2007 10:27 AM

Between reading that book and once I bothered to notice that the nuclear weapons intelligence was all wrong...

Not so. The main narrative about the nuclear weapons intelligence, brought to the public courtesy of "f'ing right" Judy Miller and the like was all wrong. The actual intelligence from the experts was that a) the aluminum tubes were not suitable for centrifuges and b) that the Niger yellowcake story was not credible.

From my perspective of a more-or-less casual observer of the news at the time, it was clear that there was some controversy about the nuclear weapons intelligence. However, the more one dug into it, more doubts about the Miller-Cheney line would have appeared.

Posted by Jeff S. | October 11, 2007 10:30 AM

adovating ideas on subjects you know nothing about is fine enough when talking about trivial things like sports or sociology, but this was WAR.

there is a curious concoction of blood and cheeto residue on your hands, yglesias. You suggested human beings be killed based on a perspective of self confessed 'total ignorance'.

what's even more amazing is that even though your past pronouncements drawn from an empty well caused you in nearly your own words to look like a stupid, jumbo-loser, idiotface you still regularly take the pale back to that same well. It's quite obvious that on most topics you choose to hold forth on your opinions are nourished by the scantest measure of real knowledge.

Posted by pimp hand strikes! | October 11, 2007 10:36 AM

I just took my cues from the fact that almost all of the leading Democrats seemed to be backing Bush on this and so I did, too.

This is an intellectual abdication. You're a smart guy with a good education. Don't they teach skepticism at Harvard? Especially in foreign policy, and at a time of national near-hysteria, the CW can be very wrong and very sheeplike.

I could give a long answer detailing my naiveté about the war...

I wish you would. It would be painful to write perhaps, but I'd appreciate it. The fact that many liberals supported the war just drives me up the wall, and I'd like to understand it better. Back in late 2002-early 2003, it seemed clear to me that everything coming out of the White House was pretext. "Why now?" was the right question to ask, and the pro-war side had no cogent answer.

Anyway, you get points in my book for self-criticism. But can we as a country somehow inoculate ourselves against ever making this kind of mistake again?

Posted by Hal | October 11, 2007 10:45 AM

I was a nuclear weapon hawk, and I believed that while there was some controversy, as JeffS said, the CIA and Colin Powell and Tony Blair knew more about the facts on the ground than I did.

Having said that, after about a year, I realized that the evidence just wasn't there.

Had I been President at that point, I would have resigned.

In any case, I don't think that getting out is as easy as Matt tries to make it - yes, there's a certain level of self-interest in a stable Iraq, but all it takes is one stupid neighbor country (I'm looking at you, Iran!) and the whole thing goes to hell.

Posted by jb | October 11, 2007 10:47 AM

"years of sanctions plus Saddam had left Iraq a mess

This was precisely the reason many people argued that there was no immediate need to go to war. Why we needed to invade Iraq in the spring of 2003 is something no one has been able to answer."

This is pure baloney. Many on the left believed like Michael Moore, that Iraq was a land of kids flying kites and big bad George Bush wanted their oil or that after 9-11 America just need to rough someone up. Chomsky had said America was preparing genocide in Afghanistan. Didn't turn out that way.

Saddam was extremly hostile to the US - and why wouldn't he be, we kicked him out of Kuwait, slapped sanctions on him, bombed him, supported the Zionist usurpers, etc. - why wouldn't he turn over WMDs to terrorists? Why did he kick UN inspectors out and not come clean? After 9-11, they weren't takng any chances.

Posted by Peter K. | October 11, 2007 10:59 AM

Peter K, you don't seem to understand why people were against the war in the first place.

I can't speak for anyone but myself, but my opposition had nothing to do with Bush hatred. I opposed it because wars are unpredictable, usually very cruel to civilians, are terrible for civil liberties at home, and should only be used in self defense or the defense of an ally. I was not convinced Saddam Hussein posed any real threat to the United States. The treatment of his own people was despicable, but no reason to go to war.

Posted by mad6798j | October 11, 2007 11:00 AM

Peter, Saddam allowed inspectors back into the country in 2003. In March 2003 Hans Blix stated to the UN that Iraq was cooperating with inspections.

Posted by mad6798j | October 11, 2007 11:06 AM

Hal --

Don't they teach skepticism at Harvard? Especially in foreign policy, and at a time of national near-hysteria, the CW can be very wrong and very sheeplike.

Hal, I didn't go to Harvard, but I did go to Yale, and I can tell you that at neither institution do they "teach" skepticism. Skepticism is a personality trait, and in most cases, a learned one. And, though I found college to be an incredibly ingellectually stimulating experience, you haven't seen "sheeplike" until you've seen "Save Darfur" shirts bought by the truckload by Art History majors who couldn't find Darfur if they were standing in it.

It wouldn't surprise me if initial support for the war were much higher than you'd expect on otherwise-overwhelmingly-liberal college campuses.

But can we as a country somehow inoculate ourselves against ever making this kind of mistake again?

Short Answer: Yes, by always, consistently electing leaders who are always wise and deliberate in the use of force.

Long Answer: No.

Posted by Daniel Munz | October 11, 2007 11:13 AM

Hi, Daniel Munz.

Well, I went to Swarthmore, and I came out as more of a questioning pain in the neck than I went in as. But I am old enough to remember the fall of Saigon. Maybe that helps.

The second part of your comment made me smile, although it's really pretty sad.

Sweeping statement alert--

America is a great country, but our arrogance seems to outstrip out greatness.

Posted by Hal | October 11, 2007 11:21 AM

Hi, Daniel Munz.

Well, I went to Swarthmore, and I came out as more of a questioning pain in the neck than I went in as. But I am old enough to remember the fall of Saigon. Maybe that helps.

The second part of your comment made me smile, although it's really pretty sad.

Sweeping statement alert--

America is a great country, but our arrogance seems to outstrip our greatness.

Posted by Hal | October 11, 2007 11:21 AM

"I could give a long answer detailing my naiveté about the war, but the truth of the matter is that in an irresponsible-but-probably-typical manner I just took my cues from the fact that almost all of the leading Democrats seemed to be backing Bush on this and so I did, too."

This is what happens when you allow yourself to be a foot soldier for one side or the other in our phony "2 party" system.

Posted by kafka | October 11, 2007 11:26 AM

Hal, I think that's sort of how it works. College's job is to load you up with all the idealism you could ever reasonably expect to have. Then, as time goes by, experience strips away some of it, and leaves other parts intact. Exactly how that shakes out determines, I think, what people are prone to be skeptical about.

America is a great country, but our arrogance seems to outstrip our greatness.

That's one to think about. Sometimes I think we're only arrogant as a country because our politicians are. But then I wonder why we ("we" here meaning the American electorate, not Matt's commenters) seem to reward that.

Maybe we need some kind of adversarial process, like in legal procedures. Whenever there's a major debate about war, there could be one agency whose sole job is to argue the case against. And no, not the "Department of Peace" -- just a corrective to ensure that our national deliberative process is, in fact, deliberative. Skepticism tends to be much more abundant when mandated by statute.

Posted by Daniel Munz | October 11, 2007 11:41 AM

"I was not convinced Saddam Hussein posed any real threat to the United States. The treatment of his own people was despicable, but no reason to go to war."

Just like the Turks on the Armenian genocide, "yes it was bad, but it wasn't that bad...."

Posted by Peter K. | October 11, 2007 11:56 AM

"When, say, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, the threat posed by Japan was sufficiently clear that people were forced to consider the merits of war with Japan qua the extent to which it is important to incapacitate and defeat them militarily..."

It's well past time to put these WWII analogies to rest. The media environment was completely different then. There were opponents to the war, but these got little airtime; the "mainstream media" of the day (major radio stations, newsreels, newspapers, etc.) were nationalist and largely unquestioning. Do you think the average American understood why our first major action after Pearl Harbor was to invade an Arab country that had nothing to do with that attack (Western Sahara)? The mainstream media didn't question it, and neither did anyone else.

If we had today's media during WWII, websites would be questioning whether we brought Pearl Harbor on ourselves by boycotting oil shipments to Japan, and whether it was worth going to war over an agribusiness colony 3,000 miles away from the Continental U.S. They would also question what business we had intervening in unrelated European affairs -- hadn't we lost enough men in the Great War? And what had been accomplished? Stately empires crumbled and communism and fascism rose out of the rubble.

Posted by Juan | October 11, 2007 11:57 AM

"Peter, Saddam allowed inspectors back into the country in 2003"

If he had nothing to hide, why kick them out in the first place?

Not the behavior of an innocent man, especially after 9-11. And why give him the benefit of the doubt, given his track record?

Posted by Peter K. | October 11, 2007 11:59 AM

If he had nothing to hide, why kick them out in the first place?

Ah, a favorite Red chestnut: "If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear."

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | October 11, 2007 12:03 PM

"Peter, Saddam allowed inspectors back into the country in 2003. In March 2003 Hans Blix stated to the UN that Iraq was cooperating with inspections."

I've had this link on auto-dial since March, 2003. Never once have I seen anyone who churns out anti-Saddam talking points address the simple fact that the UN inspectors were satisfied with the level of compliance they received from Saddam's regime. Whenever they are called on this lie, the Fox News Army just waits a week or two and repeats the lie again. Depressing, really.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | October 11, 2007 12:05 PM

Confession time? I doubted Iraq was a threat altho 9/11 expanded the definition of 'threat' beyond what most of us knew. The source of the threat appeared to me to be a chaotic civil war in the 'house of Islam'. It seemed that 9/11 made the USA into a MidEastern nation in the same way that Dec7th, '41 made the USA into an Asian/Pacific nation. Before the two attacks we were 'involved' and 'had interests' in these parts of the world. After the two attacks we lived in those parts of the world.

It seemed to me, sadly, that an occupation of Iraq would be a reasonable response to suddenly being thrust into the MidEast.

What have I learned? That American arrogance committed us to the mother of bad bargains. There are ways we might 'win' in global conflicts but at such great price that only the very worst case should force us to do so. What crisis would force us to trade nuclear missles with Russia? What crisis would force us to match our divisions against the Chinese on the mainland?

That is the level of desperation which it should have taken to force us to occupy an Arab/Muslim country.

Instead we went to Baghdad expecting to welcomed with flowers and to be home in months. What incredible stupidity.

Posted by JohnMcC | October 11, 2007 12:08 PM

Daniel Munz wrote:

Maybe we need some kind of adversarial process, like in legal procedures. Whenever there's a major debate about war, there could be one agency whose sole job is to argue the case against.

Yes, absolutely. But I thought the two-party system was supposed to do that (along with the media). The loyal opposition is supposed to look for things to oppose, while its loyalty remains unquestioned. That's the framework.

Of course, the framework failed here in 2002-03, and in the UK, where adversarial politics is more robust than here. And it failed in Vietnam in the 60s, and in Suez in 1956, and on and on. (The March of Folly by Barbara Tuchman is a good read.)

So maybe it is the people's fault, as you say. The politicians and media make it their business to know precisely what flavor of folderol the people will accept at a given moment. It's something of a feedback loop, too, as people are conditioned by what the TV tells them to think.

But sooner or later reality has a way of biting you in the ass.

Posted by Hal | October 11, 2007 12:11 PM

"If he had nothing to hide, why kick them out in the first place?"

Saddam accused the CIA of using the Inspection process to spy on his personal movements and collect information to use in a plot to overthrow him. These charges were supported by Scott Ritter.

Whatever else you may think about Hussein (or Ritter's credibility, for that matter) his behavior was entirely consistent with that of a paranoid man who was sleeping in a different house every night to avoid assassination. And the behavior of the Clinton and Bush Administrations were entirely consistent with people who were more interested in bringing down Saddam's regime than in finding WMDs.

Saddam did have something to hide. Himself. In retrospect, this should have been obvious.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | October 11, 2007 12:16 PM

It is worth noting that opposition to the war before the war by Leftists was a career killer.

I value the current contributions of Kevin, Matt and Ezra but there is a reason why they landed gigs at Washington Monthly, the Atlantic, and the American Prospect while Digby is counting on people clicking on Paypal. It's the same reason Pollack and Hanlon keep their day jobs. Right until about June 2003 at the earliest being against the war was to mark yourself as simply being 'non-serious'.

I vividly remember one of the two guys at Pandagon (whichever one went to UC Santa Cruz) explaining that his initial support of the war stemmed in large part from the fact that the only people he saw opposing it were grey haired hippies. As if living through the sixties might not have given some comparative insight. Digby calls this the DFH syndrome.

I opposed the war before it started on the basis that Saddam posed no national security threat to the United States. This being true even if he had warehouses bulging with chemical and biological weapons. To call either category of weapon a 'WMD' is simply to not understand the limitations of either. Chemical weapons are by and large a harassement agent and need to be deployed in huge quantities, absent Saddam smuggling some artillery batteries into Central Park they were no large scale threat. And biologicals are limited by modern medical practice. Conceivably you could launch a biological weapons attack in the Eastern Congo or Bangladesh and kill millions, because neither has the public health or medical infrastructure that the United States does. The notion that a single terrorist with a vial or aerosol can could launch a successful attack is nonsense. Sure you could conceivably make dozens of people sick and have some of them die, the Tokyo subway Sarin attack proves that. But something remotely on the scale of 9/11? Not even

Okay by definition college kids don't have a couple of decades of reading, thinking or certainly experiencing things military, I am happy enough that Kevin, Matt and Ezra became early adopters. And I certainly don't begrudge them their success. On the other hand I don't see Duncan getting a lot of face time on the Sunday talk shows and until a couple months ago Digby was literally faceless. There has been exactly zero interest among Big Media in seeking out people who got this right in real time. Because clearly we are not 'serious' people. And we might blurt out things like "The French got it right" and cause heads to implode or explode.
______________
Which brings me to Peter K. He may think of himself as serious but anyone who could type the following is truly non-serious:

"Why did he kick UN inspectors out and not come clean? "
Huh dude, he allowed those inspectors back in early 2007 and between 1996 and 2007 thoroughly eliminated all traces of his chemical and biological programs. Which is to say that he disarmed and ultimately allowed inspections to show that he disarmed. Which was the stated purpose of the Iraq War Resolution and the ostensible goal of Bush Administration policy. You simply want to shove reality down the memory hole. Well that is not going to happen.

And this:
"People seem to forget, the war itself was quick and cheap."
People who equate the Fall of Baghdad with the end of the war are simple cretins. By that logic Hitler won WWII. He had troops in almost every capital in Europe and his tanks had practically uncontested control of the roads. The War in the West did not end with the capture of Paris in 1940, it started. Which anyone with the slightest understanding of history or military operations would understand. Which apparently leaves Peter outside in the cold prancing around with Commander Codpiece. Saddam was still on the loose and the insurgency was gearing up in May 2003. Meanwhile certain morons were equating the toppling of a stature with VJ Day.

Posted by Bruce Webb | October 11, 2007 12:18 PM

"If he had nothing to hide, why kick them out in the first place?

Ah, a favorite Red chestnut: "If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear."
-------
Actually Saddam had stack and stacks of UN resolutions he was in violation of.

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"I've had this link on auto-dial since March, 2003. Never once have I seen anyone who churns out anti-Saddam talking points address the simple fact that the UN inspectors were satisfied with the level of compliance they received from Saddam's regime. "

Ah, Hans Blix, that paragon of objectivity. They wanted to stop the war no matter what, means justified the ends.

What makes me sad is when seemingly intelligent people would give that mass murderer Saddam the benefit of the doubt. Especially given his track recorde. Saddam's mistake was to bluff about WMDs and hung for it.

Posted by Peter K. | October 11, 2007 12:24 PM

"If he had nothing to hide, why kick them out in the first place?

Ah, a favorite Red chestnut: "If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear."
-------
Actually Saddam had stack and stacks of UN resolutions he was in violation of.

--------
"I've had this link on auto-dial since March, 2003. Never once have I seen anyone who churns out anti-Saddam talking points address the simple fact that the UN inspectors were satisfied with the level of compliance they received from Saddam's regime. "

Ah, Hans Blix, that paragon of objectivity. They wanted to stop the war no matter what, means justified the ends.

What makes me sad is when seemingly intelligent people would give that mass murderer Saddam the benefit of the doubt. Especially given his track record. Saddam's mistake was to bluff about WMDs and he hung for it. And the Sunni minority lost its dominance over Iraqi society for that mistake too.

Posted by Peter K. | October 11, 2007 12:26 PM

I value the current contributions of Kevin, Matt and Ezra but there is a reason why they landed gigs at Washington Monthly, the Atlantic, and the American Prospect while Digby is counting on people clicking on Paypal.

But TAP and the Monthly both opposed the war and I'm fairly certain Digby didn't, doesn't, and wouldn't want the Writing Fellow job Ezra and I both had at the Prospect.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | October 11, 2007 12:36 PM

"The French got it right"?

Really? It's one thing to be against a war, but you can't claim the moral high ground when your own corrupt officials were on the take from Saddam. Chirac-era France opposed the U.S. everywhere in the world out of spite, even when it meant funding, arming, and running diplomatic interference for some of the most odious regimes on the planet.

Posted by Juan | October 11, 2007 12:41 PM

"Ah, Hans Blix, that paragon of objectivity. They wanted to stop the war no matter what, means justified the ends."

Thanks for providing such a lovely illustration. The pro-war brigade claimed that Saddam refused to cooperate with the inspectors. It is pointed out that the inspectors testified that Saddam cooperated with them. The hawks respond by smearing the inspectors and changing the subject. At no point is any factual evidence presented for the claim that Saddam refused to cooperate with the inspectors.

There's a word for this type of claim in the English language:

lie –noun
1. a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.
2. something intended or serving to convey a false impression; imposture: His flashy car was a lie that deceived no one.
3. an inaccurate or false statement.
4. the charge or accusation of lying: He flung the lie back at his accusers.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | October 11, 2007 12:44 PM

"I opposed the war before it started on the basis that Saddam posed no national security threat to the United States."

On that basis, you'd have to have opposed pretty much every war since the War of 1812. Not a completely unreasonable position, but certainly a minority one these days.

Posted by Juan | October 11, 2007 12:46 PM

Speaking of non-serious.

"Do you think the average American understood why our first major action after Pearl Harbor was to invade an Arab country that had nothing to do with that attack (Western Sahara)?"

Idiot. A person you may have heard of named Adolf Hitler declared War on the United States. At the time his forces occupied most of North Africa and were threatening to take Cairo, and puppet Vichy forces were in control of Morocco. Operation Torch was a successful attack at the weak point in Hitler's armor and set the stage for the Liberation of Europe.

You can argue the details of why we decided to open the second front in North Africa as opposed to say a direct invasion of Europe. For that matter you can simply ignore Japan's brutal occupation of China and Indonesia and the threat to Australia and India. If you were a bleeping idiot. The notion that WWII was in any sense a war of choice for the US is a non-starter. The Real Axis had plans, and plans that did not exclude South America and Mexico. Some people may be okay with a vision where Japan has control of Alaska (and its oil) and a naval base in Pearl Harbor, and where the border guards on the other side of the Mexican border are wearing swastikas. Me not so much.

______
While we are at it:
"If he had nothing to hide, why kick them out in the first place?"
Well he probably had lots to hide in 1996. Kicking Inspectors out gave Saddam manuevering room to eliminate all traces of his weapons programs. Which we now know he was able to do. When push came to shove in late 2002 Saddam stopped bluffing and admitted Inspectors. Who found nothing because there was nothing to find.

What astonishes me is that people who think themselves intelligent never pause to consider that the vast bulk of Saddam's murders occured when he was a US proxy against Iran and all at a time when the US military and foreign policy apparatus were under the control of the same people who are in place today. The notion that Cheney and Rumsfield suddenly woke up and were revulsed that 'Saddam gassed his own people' is ludicrous. They put out not a peep in real time.

Peter your attempts at historical revisionism are pathetic. Certainly the original cover story for the war was going to be "If only he stopped bluffing, disarmed, and admitted Inspectors war could have been avoided". But given that in the real world Saddam stopped bluffing, disarmed and admitted Inspectors it kind of makes that version of history 'Inoperative'. My God it is like someone is chanelling Ron Ziegler here.

Posted by Bruce Webb | October 11, 2007 12:47 PM

Marc Danziger is simply not very bright or educated or mature. Need proof? - This is one of his favourite posts.

Posted by novakant | October 11, 2007 12:50 PM

"On that basis, you'd have to have opposed pretty much every war since the War of 1812."

Let's see:
1861 - Armed rebellion against the federal government attacks a fort on US soil.

1917 - Germany declares unrestricted submarine warfare against shipping in the Atlantic.

1941- Japan bombs a US Naval base and Germany, which has already conquered most of Europe, declares war on the US.

2003- The Dictator of Iraq, cooperating with international weapons inspectors on his own soil, and with 2/3 of his airspace already in full control of the US military and overwhelming US and allied forces poised on his border, insists (accurately, as it turns out) that he has no active nuclear program and no chemical or biological weapons.

You know, if I was severely mentally impaired and had no knowledge whatsoever of history, I might find your snappy little historical analogy compelling.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | October 11, 2007 12:55 PM

Somebody up above wrote: "I opposed the war before it started on the basis that Saddam posed no national security threat to the United States."

Juan replied: On that basis, you'd have to have opposed pretty much every war since the War of 1812. Not a completely unreasonable position, but certainly a minority one these days.

I think one can make a pretty good case that both the US civil war and WWII involved national security threats.

And one can certainly make a good case that at least some of the other wars (Mexican war, Spanish-American war, Vietnam) were not necessarily good ideas in retrospect.

Posted by J | October 11, 2007 1:01 PM

1861 - Armed rebellion against the federal government attacks a fort on US soil.

Wasn't US soil - it was soil of the Confederacy, and the US soldiers refused to leave.

1917 - Germany declares unrestricted submarine warfare against shipping in the Atlantic.

And the US national security threat was...? If Iraq was blood for oil, this sounds like blood for shipping. A less violent solution: our ships should have stayed home.

1941- Japan bombs a US Naval base and Germany, which has already conquered most of Europe, declares war on the US.

Japan I can see as a national security threat. But we didn't attack Japan, we attacked Germany. And a declaration of war is just words - there was no national security threat from Germany. FDR should have replied to Germany "sticks and stones may break our bones but words (such as a declaration of war) will never hurt us". If and when we were actually attacked by Germany, a response would have been called for -- provided that the response would only be proportional to what Germany did to us: no massive invasion of Europe unless there was an imminent threat of a massive German invasion of US territory.

Posted by Al | October 11, 2007 1:05 PM

"Let's see:

1861 - Armed rebellion against the federal government attacks a fort on US soil."

We could have let the southern states secede. Had we done so, there would have been no threat to the rest of the country from them.

"1917 - Germany declares unrestricted submarine warfare against shipping in the Atlantic."

Because we were supplying their enemy Great Britain. Had we refused to supply either side, they wouldn't have targeted our ships.

"1941- Japan bombs a US Naval base and Germany, which has already conquered most of Europe, declares war on the US."

Had we not strangled Japan's oil supplies, they would never have attacked our colonial naval base at Pearl Harbor. Germany's declaration of war against us at that point meant what, exactly? That they were about to invade Maine? Why did we need to invade Western Sahara in response to a piece of paper? The only place at the time Germany was a threat to us was in the Atlantic -- and there, only because we were supplying its enemy Great Britain.

Posted by Juan | October 11, 2007 1:11 PM

Because we were supplying their enemy Great Britain. ... and there, only because we were supplying its enemy Great Britain.

Danged British. Always getting us into trouble.

Posted by Al | October 11, 2007 1:17 PM

Wasn't US soil - it was soil of the Confederacy

Traitor.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | October 11, 2007 1:17 PM

"We didn't attack Japan"

Al, that's some funny shit. Really, take a bow.

You can play around with Jefferson Davis' talking points and anti-war slogans for yuks, but the simple fact is that the threats posed to our national security by the Baathist regime were just a tad smaller than armed insurrection in South Carolina, US-flag ships being sunk at will, or a declaration of war from the Nazi war machine.

And it's somewhat telling that the only defense that can be mustered on behalf of the Iraq hawks' bad historical analogies are snarkier bad historical analogies.

Really, if you want to defend the decision to go to war in Iraq on the grounds that Hitler, Bismarck, and the Confederacy didn't pose any more of a threat to US National Security interests than Saddam did, you go right ahead. In fact, I suggest you write some speeches along those lines for the leading Republican Presidential candidates.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | October 11, 2007 1:21 PM

"Danged British. Always getting us into trouble."

They were like the Israelis of the first half of the 20th Century.

Posted by Juan | October 11, 2007 1:22 PM

We could have let the southern states secede. Had we done so, there would have been no threat to the rest of the country from them.

Putting aside where I stand in this whole debate, isn't the dissolution of a nation kind of a de facto threat to national security? Plus, there's rather a lot of paperwork involved.

Posted by Daniel Munz | October 11, 2007 1:25 PM

"Putting aside where I stand in this whole debate, isn't the dissolution of a nation kind of a de facto threat to national security?"

Sort of puts our role in the Balkans in a new light, no?

Posted by Juan | October 11, 2007 1:27 PM

Traitor.

???

I support self determination. If a state determines that it wants to leave, it should have the right. Same with East Timor leaving Indonesia, or Kosovo leaving Serbia, or Quebec leaving Canada, or whatever.

Are you saying you oppose self determination?

Posted by Al | October 11, 2007 1:28 PM

Bruce W"
"What astonishes me is that people who think themselves intelligent never pause to consider that the vast bulk of Saddam's murders occured when he was a US proxy against Iran and all at a time when the US military and foreign policy apparatus were under the control of the same people who are in place today. "

Technically, he wasn't a proxy. The Soviet Union, China, France, etc. were backing him against Iran's revolutionary Shia radicalism.

I imagine your astonished by the fact the US and Great Britain were allies with Stalin against Hitler before they turned on their former ally?

Posted by Peter K. | October 11, 2007 1:28 PM

I see, Al. East Timor's situation vis a vis Indonesia was EXACTLY the same as South Carolina's vis a vis the United States. I must have missed the day in history class when it was explained how the Continental Army invaded South Carolina right after the British pulled out and forced them at gunpoint to ratify the Constitution.

I also missed the part where South Carolina was arbitrarily included within U.S. borders during a bureaucratic reorganization conducted by a Communist Dictator.

Boy, today's episode of Bad Analogy Theatre is shaping up to be one of the best ever.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | October 11, 2007 1:37 PM

LaFollette,

It's refreshing to see a Democrat defend the Civil War. Better late than never, I guess.

Which reminds me of something: I went to a movie with my liberal sister at a theater in Manhattan last weekend, and there was a commercial for the Marine Corps prior to the feature. This got her started chatting with strangers about how this was "propaganda" and how the war was "bullshit" and soldiers are coming home maimed, etc. When a few folks murmured in agreement, she turned to me and said, "This is New York". So I reminded her that New Yorkers had similar feelings about the Civil War at the time.

The point is, that most of the cynical arguments against the Iraq War could be applied to other American wars, including wars most of us today claim were "good" wars.

Posted by Juan | October 11, 2007 2:02 PM

It's refreshing to see a Democrat defend the Civil War. Better late than never, I guess.

You may not be aware of this, but in the past century-and-a-half the US Republican and Democratic parties have more or less switched places.

Posted by J | October 11, 2007 2:19 PM

Which reminds me of something:

Hey, you know what? I was once talking with some unnamed conservative and he said something really dumb. So I made some witty and insightful response.

The point of this evidence-free anecdote is ... uh ... something or other.

Posted by J | October 11, 2007 2:32 PM

"You may not be aware of this, but in the past century-and-a-half the US Republican and Democratic parties have more or less switched places."

Not really. The Republican Party 150 years ago was the party of businessmen and the Democratic Party 150 years ago was the party of unions and ethnic lobbies; that much is still true today.

Posted by Juan | October 11, 2007 2:34 PM

The Republican Party 150 years ago was the party of businessmen and the Democratic Party 150 years ago was the party of unions and ethnic lobbies; that much is still true today.

Check out the money races. The "business men" of the Republican Party don't like the crazy Southern Conservatives all that much either. (Which, I think, is why three of the four major candidates are not from the South. Of course, I also think Thompson's got no shot for mainly the same reason. Yet he's number two in the race, I think. So who knows?) To the extent that there's a Northern Party, it's the Dems by default.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | October 11, 2007 2:44 PM

I appreciate the candor of Matt's mea culpa. No doubt I've missed many important exchanges on the Internet. But I think the defiant attitude maintained by many of the pre-war liberal hawks, even those who now want the war wound down (not the same as saying they were wrong to have supported the war, BTW) has prevented the kind of open, searching discussion needed among liberals about why so many prominent members of their herd went along with Bush & Co. on the war. It's only among liberals and Democrats that their support was really important; they were willing to serve as hood ornaments on a GOP Hummer. Or an Escalade. Choose your automotive metaphor.

Peter S., I think it was, noted that you really didn't need to be an expert or have inside knowledge to see through the propaganda campaign about WMDs. You didn't even really need to read Knight-Ridder coverage. You just had to read stories by Judy Miller, Michael Gordon, and others in the Times ALL THE WAY TO THE END AND WITH A CRITICAL EYE. The infamous aluminum tubes story, if read in its entirety and with the television turned off, gave ample reason to doubt the warmongers' case. I've always thought that the Times editors deserve a lot more blame than they've received for the way they wrote headlines over those stories (something reporters usually don't do), b/c these headlines often gave impressions about the stories' content that was belied by a full reading of the stories.

A lot of people know how Washington works. If you're inside the beltway bubble and you're at all ambitious, before you know it the salient question about an endeavor like the Iraq invasion can shift from, Is this justified? to Are you getting on the train, because it is leaving?

Many of Bush's henchpersons tried to scare Americans into thinking there was an imminent threat from Iraq, but the high administration officials, most of all Bush himself, were careful about it. If you look back at their pre-war statements, they really were saying that the threat wasn't imminent--but that we should not let it become imminent. That's what Bush said over and over. So he was selling a doctrine of preventive war, not preemptive war. The former is far more radical than the latter. It is a sad comment that so many in Washington, including so many Democrats and liberals, failed to realize how radical, destabilizing, and simply wrong the idea of preventive war was and is. Historically it has been considered quite a shameful doctrine. That this wasn't obvious to serious policy wonks reveals a sad deficit of historical consciousness.

I would like to see some reporter ask all Democratic and Republican presidential candidates: "Do you support the doctrine of preventive war? Yes or no will suffice." But that won't happen.

Posted by Doug | October 11, 2007 2:54 PM

"To the extent that there's a Northern Party, it's the Dems by default."

Tell that to John Edwards, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, etc. People in both parties are tired of Southern domination. That's why Hillary prefers to throw the first lady of Arkansas period down the memory hole.

Posted by Juan | October 11, 2007 3:01 PM

Juan wrote:

The Republican Party 150 years ago was the party of businessmen and the Democratic Party 150 years ago was the party of unions and ethnic lobbies; that much is still true today.

Nice try, but no cigar. There are plenty of other ways in which the pattern is reversed. The antebellum Democratic Party was the party in favor of overseas military adventurism, low tariffs, small government, and (in southern states) very narrowly limited suffrage even among white males; and was the party opposed to women's rights, minority rights, tax increases, public education, etc.

Look at the unprecedented period of big-government activism when the Republicans took over Congress during the Civil War.

Or ... just look at a recent electoral map and compare it to a similar map from 1860.

Posted by J | October 11, 2007 3:10 PM

As a phil prof I'm intrigued by the following remark:

. . . . it looked pretty clear that I'd gotten this wrong. In retrospect, I think it was all foreseeable enough, but like a lot of people I said a lot about this issue without knowing anything about it and it's hard to make forecasts from a perspective of total ignorance.

Since you're on the topic of how you thought superficially about matters of life and death, perhaps you could explain the steps you have taken to avoid repeating the same kind of mistake. What accounted, in other words, for your ability to yammer on about things about which you knew nothing, but which things involved obvious and painful consequences (such as the violent, fiery death of many Iraqi bystanders, to name one very obvious consequence of going to war with Iraq).

Posted by jcasey | October 11, 2007 3:23 PM

What accounted, in other words, for your ability to yammer on about things about which you knew nothing

I'm not sure Matthew really needs to account for that. In my experience, lots of people have no difficulty yammering on about things of which they no nothing. It seems to be a pretty basic human characteristic.

Posted by J | October 11, 2007 3:47 PM

"of which they no nothing"

Oh God, I've been reading this blog too long -- Matthew's brain is starting to take over.

Must ... read ... carefully ... before ... posting ...

Posted by J | October 11, 2007 3:50 PM

Just like the Turks on the Armenian genocide, "yes it was bad, but it wasn't that bad...."

Yes. Certainly not bad enough to warrant going to war over.

Posted by mad6798j | October 11, 2007 5:10 PM

Juan, yes, the Spanish American war was unnecesssary. The Mexican American war was unnecessary. WW1 is debatable, but the Germans were sinking US ships, so war was not unreasonable. Korea was a fiasco, establishing the idea the president can go to war without a declaration from congress. Vietnam speaks for itself.

The Civil War is a much more complicated issue than any of the others, but remember, war started when the south attacked a US military base.

Posted by mad6798j | October 11, 2007 5:17 PM

Great to see someone who's read Tripp, However, you do realize the Wahhabi Ilkwan incursions in the Shia plains, the Assyrian massacre, the rise
of Al Ghailani's Golden Square movement leading
to the 1936 coup attempt, the '41 coup and the
Farhud, were all results after the Brits pulled
out. So much for the idea of noconsequences to
'redeployment.

Posted by narciso | October 11, 2007 10:14 PM

Yeah, great, Matt, "mea culpa" and all that.

NOW WHAT ABOUT FUCKING IRAN, MATT?

STILL haven't heard you state explicitly that you oppose attacking Iran or any other explicit opinion about Iran, for that matter.

What do I have to do - be another blogger with an audience to get your attention for a SIMPLE FUCKING QUESTION?

It doesn't help for you to admit you knew zip about Iraq, military matters, etc., ad nauseum - when you continue to babble about Iran in the same vein. And when I say babble about Iran, I mean your support for Obama and his bullcrap about Iran being a "serious threat."

ANSWER THE FUCKING QUESTION, MATT!

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 11, 2007 10:41 PM

"The French got it right"?

Peter K.:
"Really? It's one thing to be against a war, but you can't claim the moral high ground when your own corrupt officials were on the take from Saddam. Chirac-era France opposed the U.S. everywhere in the world out of spite, even when it meant funding, arming, and running diplomatic interference for some of the most odious regimes on the planet."

Yes. Really. They got it right. You got it wrong. Your war resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent people and a civil war that will last another decade at least. If France had gotten their way all of those people would still be alive. So go ahead and spare us your lectures on the "moral higher ground."

Posted by Brian | October 11, 2007 11:05 PM

"If France had gotten their way all of those people would still be alive."

More likely, similar or higher numbers would have been tortured to death and buried in mass graves, as was the case throughout Saddam's reign. At least now the Iraqis have a chance at creating a better country for themselves. Whether or not they will succeed is an open question, but they have been given a historic opportunity -- one their leading dissidents begged for.

Posted by Juan | October 11, 2007 11:12 PM

"Really? It's one thing to be against a war, but you can't claim the moral high ground when your own corrupt officials were on the take from Saddam. Chirac-era France opposed the U.S. everywhere in the world out of spite, even when it meant funding, arming, and running diplomatic interference for some of the most odious regimes on the planet.

Posted by Juan | October 11, 2007 12:41 PM"

Chirac was one of the guys who helped persuade us to go into the Balkans. He's not a stand-up guy, but he was right about Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq.

"More likely, similar or higher numbers would have been tortured to death and buried in mass graves, as was the case throughout Saddam's reign. At least now the Iraqis have a chance at creating a better country for themselves. Whether or not they will succeed is an open question, but they have been given a historic opportunity -- one their leading dissidents begged for.

Posted by Juan | October 11, 2007 11:12 PM"

However, the death rate in Iraq before the war was lower than it has been since the war. There were three peaks of high death rates under Saddam - the Iran-Iraq War, the genocide against the Kurds in the 1980's and after the Gulf War when Shi'ites rebelled. We didn't go into Iraq to create a democracy. We didn't even hold elections there until al-Sistani made it clear that without elections, he would be our enemy. We've sold of most of their most abundant natural resource to multinational corporations at the same time that the oil law controversy is a sticking point in Iraq's ethnic politics. Even elite Iraqi exile dissidents who worked closely with Bush now say (at least in private) that they think Bush is more or less functionally retarded and that they hate Wolfowitz. We never went in with enough troops to secure any peace. We didn't set Iraq free; we used it as a tabula rasa to project our own vision of ourselves and Rumsfeld's theories of warfare.

You also seem to be arguing against the idea of having evidence for when you go to war. If the inspections had found that Iraq really did have a WMD's program that it refused to disband and was a present and direct national security threat, it would have been a just war. However, when someone launches a war, the burden of proof is on them to have a real reason based on fact for going to war, not asking the potential enemy nation to prove a negative (that Iraq didn't have WMD). With regard to WWII, this was easy because Japan attacked us (cutting off your oil supplies from a country is not an act of war. We weren't at war with apartheid South Africa during the embargo) Bombing without warning or real provocation is an act of war) and Germany declared war on us. We were not the aggressors in WWII. In the Iraq War, we were. This should be simple to understand. What you are arguing for in effect is blind obedience to the state as a form of nationalism.

"I support self determination. If a state determines that it wants to leave, it should have the right. Same with East Timor leaving Indonesia, or Kosovo leaving Serbia, or Quebec leaving Canada, or whatever.

Are you saying you oppose self determination?

Posted by Al | October 11, 2007 1:28 PM"

You're skipping over the part where the majority of many Southern state at the time of Fort Sumter were black slaves. If the black majority in many Southern states said that they wanted independence because white Americans had been too racist to them and then Lincoln attacked, Lincoln would have been attacking the idea of national self-determination. The Confederacy would have pretty much been an apartheid nation if it was allowed to live.

Posted by Reality Man | October 12, 2007 6:11 AM

Brian:
-
"The French got it right"?
Peter K.:
"Really? It's one thing to be against a war, but you can't claim the moral high ground when your own corrupt officials were on the take from Saddam. Chirac-era France opposed the U.S. everywhere in the world out of spite, even when it meant funding, arming, and running diplomatic interference for some of the most odious regimes on the planet."
----------

I didn't write that....

Posted by Peter K. | October 12, 2007 4:16 PM